Afghan Connection supports education and sport in Afghanistan. It was set up in 2002 and has touched the lives of more than 280,000 people. The charity has funded 46 school constructions for more than 75,000 children and is working to ensure that every child has access to education.

Tuesday, 14 October 2008

In Transit..... 13th October

First step of the journey over. When the Emirates crew heard I was on my way to Afghanistan, they apologised for being full in Business Class where they wanted to upgrade me and found be a row of 4 seats instead, where I curled up and watched 3 weepy films in a row!

As I battled my way through the transit queue at Dubai International Airport, the call to prayer echoed across the cavernous corridors - such a mix of West and East, capitalism and religion - one vast melting pot, where thousands of souls are in transit. Differentlanguages compete to be heard, exotic scripts line the walls offering directions to bewildered passengers, bodies lie sprawled in restless, homeless sleep and solid gold palm trees soar above one of the biggest duty free shopping centres in the world. I feel very alone, but not uncomfortably so in this strange environment between two lives.

My bags have arrived, but I am not allowed to get them. They will, I presume and hope, be picked up and put somewhere until 4am, when I have been told by a Mr Sayed, that I can check in for Kabul and my bags will be plucked out of the ether, labelled and sent to Terminal 2 to join me on the last leg of my journey - Insha Allah!! I have a vision of them going round and round the luggage belt unclaimed and lost forever, but am powerless to act.

Inspired by a gap year working in rural India, Sarah Fane decided to switch from her degree course in French and Latin to study medicine at Bristol University. Her elective was spent in the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan, where she met with the Guildford Surgical Team. She returned with them the following year to Pakistan, and worked from a Mujahideen border camp, seeing female patients from the surrounding refugee camps.
Ten years later, having married, had four children, and done various in hospital jobs between children, she was asked to go to the Panjshir Valley, Afghanistan, to assess a mother and child clinic. The visit and the people she met inspired her to set up this charity.